Fez Diary: Part One

I taught at a language institute in Fez earlier this year. It was in a slightly rundown part of the new town, an ageing tower block which refused to acknowledge the presence of the sun and in whose cold bedrooms candles were lit for warmth as much as light. The chilly white-tiled corridors weren’t homely, but they housed a permanent staff of four hard-working fassi teachers, and an occasional trickle of casual volunteer teachers who passed (unnoticed it appeared sometimes) through its well-barred doors.

My first memory of the place was the bathroom, because it was the room I made a beeline for after arriving from the mountains. Sadly hot water came only from the tap in the sink so you were forced to brave a pitiful bucket shower huddled like a foetus in the tub. A shower in the early morning and evening was futile because of the chill in the air. To make matters worse the window frame was open to the elements. We scrounged a pink Mickie Mouse bed sheet from god knows where and gaffa-taped it to the frame. Yet however much we tried to keep it in place one corner of the sheet always fell in, subjecting the exposed and vulnerable foetus to blasts of what felt like gusts of arctic air. For a room with such a bright and breezy colour scheme (the pink bed sheet ‘window’ complemented the pink tub) it was not a happy place.

Lessons were conversational and easy. I sourced a book of Moroccan anecdotes on the net and in one class we had a hilarious time translating them and re-writing them in English. I was, bizarrely, entrusted with the responsibility of conducting interviews for prospective teachers. Given about thirty minutes notice, unshaven and dressed in jogging bottoms, sports jumper and scarf, I probed them with some pretty searching questions about Task-Based Learning.  

On weekends there were beautiful trips to be taken: to the roman ruins at Volubilis, which at dawn were entirely empty of anyone or any sound, to the hilltop town of Moulay Idriss (until recently off-limits to infidels), and train rides to market towns to listen to the gossip among the fruit and veg stalls under blood-orange skies.

After a week of the school bathroom ordeal I decided to make a concerted effort to find a hammam. Opposite an area of waste ground, whose long evening shadows and rusting car wrecks put me in mind of the New York in I am Legend, the place was like a re-birth after the clinical corridors of the school. Rather than make a smooth, unannounced entrance I quickly advertised myself as a foreigner and sauna rookie by pinching a man’s bucket of hot water. Whistling as I poured, lost in a blissful soapy water-induced reverie, I was immune to the angry remonstrations of one of the most hirsute men I have ever seen (and I schooled with Greeks). I made my apologies and slunk off to another room. The scrub down and ‘massage’ I then had was firmly in that category of therapeutic activities where if you weren’t cognisant of the fact that you were paying for a leisure activity you’d call the police and get the man arrested for assault.

Some cash disappeared from my room, and we narrowed it down to the cleaner after an exhaustive going over of the security tapes. I still have my scribbled case notes somewhere I think.  The fact was she had no business being in our rooms at 8pm in the evening and she gave it away when she emerged into the foyer post-crime and smirked at the camera. I left it at that though, because a glance is not proof (it could technically have been the other teacher Cris) and I contented myself with seething at her privately. I continued to eat her excellent couscous lunches though, recovering my losses one grain at a time.

When we didn’t have class we drank cheap but drinkable red wine and walked the few kilometres to old Fez in any weather because we had the time. The lanes twisted and turned, and as the ground dropped, for it is not a flat city, a different cast of characters emerged the deeper you burrowed, and the later the hour. People made shifty by the darkness congregated on street corners and rats scampered past cats too fat to chase them. Infinite streets led to courtyards where the evening lamps invited slow contemplation. Men wearing their iconic djellabas appeared from around corners like surreptitious monks on secretive ecclesiastical errands, and locked ancient doors with huge keys that made wonderful noises as they clicked in the lock. The lamps suffused everything in a golden glow and you were in another age. There were spectacular timbered doors, deserted fountains and walled gardens sleeping lying silent under midnight stars.

Wine-soaked one memorable evening we accepted an invitation from some boisterous teenagers who had hot-boxed (older people please refer to the urban dictionary) a shadowy building which was somewhere between a cave and a barn in appearance.  The smell of weed mixed seductively with fresh hay as the kids challenged each other on a creaking Foosball table while two shoot-em-up arcade games lit up the room with eighties graphics and flashing lights – all this in an edifice straight from Arabian Nights.

PART TWO – BOOZE AND BARS